M'sia widens recruitment for foreign workers

The government today said it would immediately begin recruiting workers in Pakistan, India, Burma, Nepal and Vietnam because of a labour shortage caused by the expulsion of illegal immigrants, mostly Indonesians.

Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, who heads a cabinet committee on the problem, told a news conference the move was necessary because too few of the hundreds of thousands of expelled Indonesian workers had taken up an offer to return legally.

Najib said the government had approved permits for 169,000 Indonesians but only 11,000 had returned under a scheme designed to transform illegal immigrants into legal workers once they were processed in their own country.

“We hope the government of Indonesia will send the workers as soon as possible to meet our economic needs,” Najib said.

“We have 11 one-stop centres in Indonesia where the Indonesian workers can obtain their permits.”

Asked what was causing the delay, Najib said: “It is very much in the Indonesian court.” He did not elaborate.

“Because of the serious need for foreign workers the cabinet committee has agreed to also take workers from Pakistan, India, Myanmar (Burma), Nepal and Vietnam. Immediate steps will be taken to bring them to Malaysia because the demand is strong.”

Not a political move

Najib said the move to bring in workers from other countries was “not political. We are very practical. We need the workers. We are giving every avenue to Indonesian workers.

“To demonstrate our strong ties with Indonesia we will scrap the induction course because Indonesian workers understand our local language and culture, and training can be done when they are in Malaysia.”

Najib said 382,000 illegal immigrants had left the country under a four-month amnesty which ended on March 1.

Their departure has caused a major labour shortage in Malaysia. Some 200,000 workers are reportedly needed in the manufacturing sector, 150,000 in construction, 50,000 in plantations and 20,000 in the services sector.

Najib said that at present there are 1.5 million legal foreign workers in Malaysia. One million of them are Indonesians.